


The Prisoner of the October Country

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Halloween, M/M, credence as a headless horseman-esque halloween spirit, mentions of Grindelwald, percival graves as himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 00:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: A Halloween faerie tale regarding a knight at the bottom of a well, a headless prince, and an oath sworn in the October Country.





	The Prisoner of the October Country

**Author's Note:**

> This my second and final fic for the trick-or-treat fest, and a prompt-fill for Treat 2.  
> I can be found on Tumblr at @clockhearted-crocodile.

Long, long ago, there was a prisoner of the October Country, and his name was Percival Graves.

Yes, dear one, the very same. This was many years before you were born, and long before all his most famous adventures, though he had already made a name for himself in the War.

This is the story of how Percival Graves first met the Prince of the Boneyard.

Now, there is a wishing well out in the October Country. It is twelve fathoms deep, and five feet wide. The bottom of the well is so cold and so cramped, and so very near to Hell, that nothing can live there for very long. It is a terrible place. This is why I tell you not to run so close to the well in our backyard.

But our well is not half so deep as the well in the October Country, and here Percival Graves was kept for thirty days and thirty nights. He had fought long and hard with a fierce enemy, and that enemy had finally stripped him of his magic, and dragged him west into the October Country to leave him at the bottom of that wretched well. From that place, there was no escape. Every day and every night he would stare longingly up at the mouth of the well, which opened unto the dull, ashen night sky, and the moon’s silver eye staring down at him.

Who was this fierce enemy?

Why, he was a fair-haired trickster whose name has been lost to time, a wicked old thing with eyes that rolled in their sockets like dice in china cups. He was in the habit of taking faces. Yes, that’s right, little one. He would creep up behind good men and women, and when they turned to face him— like _THAT,_ their face was his! He might go about his day and pretend to _be_ them, and none be any the wiser! He might even do it to _you._

Now, one blustery evening, as the wind whistled across the mouth of the well and chilled Percival’s very bones, the light of the moon went out. Darkness took him. Could it be that his one comfort, the light of the moon, had been taken from him forever?

Not so, dearest, for when his eyes had adjusted to this new darkness, he saw a strange figure leaning over the mouth of the well. Sure enough, it was he! The Prince of the Boneyard.

Ah, I see you know the name, little one. You know him from his own stories, and his own rhymes, for he is prince of more than the boneyards: he is the Obscurial, the Bare-Bone King, the Catcher-of-Pumpkins, the Woe-Be-Tide. It is he that scoops the skeletons from the bellies of our pumpkins, and leaves them to grow, round and orange and luminous as lanterns, in our pumpkin patches.

If you know him, then you know that the Prince of the Boneyard may change his shape whenever he pleases, as quick as never-you-mind, not unlike how the fair-haired trickster may change his face. Why, one moment he might be a slippery black cat, the next, a tender black lamb, or a proud black stallion. Most frequently he takes the form of a man, as lithe and beautiful as any winsome ghoul, but always, no matter what form he may take, one thing remains the same. Do you know it?

Of course you do, for the Prince of the Boneyard has no head! None at all! In the place where his head ought to be, a sweet-smelling black smoke pours from his neck. To conceal this unfortunate circumstance, he wears a carved-up pumpkin, always a-grinning its toothy grin. The smoke pours up and up and out and out, out from his mouth and his eyes and his nose, and it seems as though he is on fire!

What a fright this apparition gave Percival Graves, the first time he saw him!

“Let me out of this wretched place!” He cried, for he was very afraid, and thought it might be the fair-haired trickster come once again to torment him. “Return my magic, and release me, or my friends will bring such ruin on you as you have never known, not for a thousand years!”

“Friends?” said the Prince of the Boneyard, (for the word was foreign to him then,) “I don’t believe you have any, Mr. Graves. Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

Percival Graves did not, in fact, know how long he’d been there.

“Thirty days and thirty nights,” said the Prince of the Boneyard, and he watched as Percival wilted under the weight of this new revelation.

The Prince of the Boneyard watched him for a long, long moment. It seemed as though he wouldn’t speak again.

“Do you know who I am?” said the Prince of the Boneyard, drawing himself up to his full and considerable height.

Percival raised his head, and it was plain to see that now that his shock and fear had passed, he was ready to be Brave Percival, the Knight Percival, once again. “I do, or I think I do,” he said. “You are the Prince of the Boneyard.”

“I am,” said the apparition, clasping his hands behind his back. “There is nothing that goes on in the October Country of which I am not aware. If a bird is struck dumb by a scarecrow’s leer, I know it. If a frog swallows a stone at the bottom of a pond, I know it. If a little sticky-fingered corn imp wanders lost in a bog, I know it. And,” and here he paused, relishing his speech, “if a fair-haired trickster tosses a handsome wizard into a well as if he were a coin, I know it.”

“Then let me go,” Percival said, for he was not without cunning, and the gears in his mind were already turning. “If you know so much, and hold so much sway over this land, surely you can pull me up from the bottom of this well.”

The Prince of the Boneyard mulled this over for a while.

“Hmm. I could do it, of course. It would be nothing at all to me, for I am as clever as a fox and as handsome as the night is long. But I don’t think I want to, Mr. Graves.”

He muttered and hummed to himself for a while, and glanced up at the moon, as though searching for answers in its light.

“Unless,” he cried, and snapped his fingers as though pleased by his own genius, “Unless you would be willing to do something for me in return.”

“Anything,” said Percival, for he was quite desperate at this point.

“I find myself utterly alone in the world, Mr. Graves, and longing for a friend,” said the Prince of the Boneyard. “Why, not even little children go out on Halloween Night anymore.”

(That is the reason, little one, that we must always wear our costumes when that Halloween wind blows, and the gates of the October Country are at their widest. For you see, if you hide your face thusly, the Prince of the Boneyard takes you for one of his own, and passes you by. But if he catches you outside on Halloween Night, with no mask to conceal you? Oh Lord in Heaven! You’ll get it then.)

“I will dredge you up from this sorry prison of yours, if, and only if, you swear to me that you will visit me in my loneliness. I do so hunger for conversation.”

“I swear to you,” said Percival Graves, “I swear on my life, and on my father’s life, that if you free me from this prison I will return to this very place every year on Halloween Night, that you might do with me what you will.”

“And every year hence?”

“And every year hence.”

And every year, on Halloween Night, Percival Graves returned to visit the Prince of the Boneyard, and they spoke long and long about whatever they wished, and in this way, became very good friends indeed. And every year, on Halloween Night, Percival Graves walks through the wide gates of the October Country without a care in the world, for no ghoulie nor ghostie nor long-legged beastie would dare to give him a fright, lest they risk the wrath of the Prince of the Boneyard. Nor did the fair-haired trickster trouble them again, for of course, the Prince of the Boneyard has no face to steal.

Percival Graves had sworn, every year, to return, and so he does, though it has been many a year since that pact was made. Perhaps you’ll see him one Halloween, little one, marching across the world to the October Country, spectral and gray and bearing all the airy lightness of the dead.

In time he began to frighten the October creatures, you know; the banshee and the will-o-the-wisp, the wendigo and the were-wolf, the goblin and the hobgoblin, and even old Jack-of-Candles himself. He became a now-and-then specter, a come-and-go ghost, who visits the October Country and dances merrily with its prince, but is never quite a part of it.

But these are other stories. Stories that you will hear one day, if your father and I have anything to say about it.

Perhaps next Halloween.


End file.
